Many times I have been in situations in public in which people who knew who I was would come up to me and start talking to me, and I didn't know who they were. I remember it happening at a grocery store a few years ago when a person who would have been considered the closest approximation I had to a friend in high school started talking to me, addressing me by name, but never gave any kind of indication who he was. I spent most of the rest of the night trying to determine who this person was and why he knew my name and was addressing me in familiarity.
I remember another time when I was in college and a sociology professor whose class I was taking saw me walking with my mom in a Sears. She started to talk to me and I had no idea who she was until she started talking about sociology. Encountering a person you have dealt with while with another person is worse, because they expect that you will introduce them, but if you don't know who one of them is, it is terrifying.
I can remember people if they have exceptionally distinctive characteristics, things about them which are very unusual or abnormal, like unusual hairdos, or if they dress in ways which are very uncommon, but when that is changed, I don't know who they are. Exactly as it's been described by others here, it's really bad when you're at work and you've interacted with someone before, and although you remember the interaction you completely don't remember what the person looked like.
I've actually gotten a co-worker in trouble before, because I talked to my supervisor's secretary to ask her to place a call to get something repaired in my office. The repair person, an employee there, had come to my office and said hi to me, and I, not knowing who they were, didn't communicate with them. They left, and hours later I was asked by my supervisor's secretary whether the person had come to talk to me, and I said no. I wasn't trying to get them in trouble. I just didn't know what they looked like, regardless of having interacted with them before.
If people of similar physical characteristics(weight, skin color, hair color and clothing) talk to me within close periods of time, I'll often not realize that they're different people.
When watching television or movies, if there are two characters who have similar physical characteristics, I'll often get them confused. I watch shows about crime, and sometimes I think that the same person is the criminal and the good guy, and it's only when they actually interact do I realize who each character is, and from that point on I notice some distinguishing characteristic to separate them. But if the antagonist and the protagonist are similar, like two light-haired men, two light-haired women, two dark-haired men, or two dark-haired women, I often get them confused.
If I have repeatedly interacted with a person over a long period of time, like years, I would like to think that I have some ability to remember their face, but sometimes I've even had trouble recognizing family members. I remember one time when I was a child and I was getting off a plane after visiting my dad. I didn't recognize my own mom. Nothing about her appearance had changed significantly while I was gone. Thankfully she recognized me and my sister recognized her. I didn't mention it to them, because I knew that it would seem odd. I only see my sister a few times per year now, and I often don't recognize her, even though she does look somewhat distinctive.
17 Feb 2012, 3:24 pm
